Chapter 12 #2
Elliot lets out a snort of laughter, holding up his phone and snapping a picture seconds before I turn on him.
“You know, I expected this from them.” I toss an arm in Noah and Jordan’s direction, a cloud of glitter flying off my sleeve and into the air, making Noah and Jordan laugh even harder.
“But I really expected better from you.”
“Sorry, little brother.” He goes to toss an arm around my shoulders and then seems to think better of it. “I had to let them have their fun. It’s our first baby. This is a momentous occasion.”
The way he says it—our first baby—has my irritation melting away almost instantly.
I’ve been so busy focusing on Evan and trying to keep up at work that I haven’t really had much time to talk to my brothers about this since the night I told everyone.
I meant it when I said I haven’t given much thought to the baby of it all.
But this reminder that, no matter what, I have my family to help me though it makes me feel like it’ll all be okay.
But I’m standing here covered in glitter and dick confetti, so in this moment I am decidedly not okay, and I definitely have some brothers to murder.
“So, you thought the best way to mark this occasion would be to cover me in tiny dicks and glitter that will take me weeks to wash off, not to mention what it’ll do to my apartment?”
Noah shrugs, still laughing. “Seemed logical.”
Jordan smirks at me. “The glitter will probably be gone by the time your baby is crawling.”
“If it’s not, you can always just move. I hear glitter lasts forever, so that might be easier.” When I shoot a death glare at Elliot, he just grins at me.
“Oh my god, it’s even better than I expected!” Jo appears in my doorway, Amelia and Hannah behind her.
“Pink is your color, Coop,” Hannah manages through uncontrollable giggles.
“I hope you have a lot of shampoo and a really good vacuum,” Amelia says, before letting out a peal of laughter.
“You all knew about this too?”
“Duh,” Jo says with a grin. “Who do you think found the website?”
“I tried to talk them out of it.” Amelia tries, and fails, to smother her laughter.
I narrow my eyes at her. “How hard did you try?”
She shrugs. “Not that hard.”
“I hate all of you,” I grumble, shaking my head again as all six of them take a giant step back to avoid the confetti shower.
“We love you, Cooper, and we’re really happy for you.” Jo steps in and wraps her arms around my waist in a tight hug.
I lean down and kiss her head. “Thanks Jo Jo, but you know you’re all glittery now too, right?”
I can feel her smile against my chest. “I do love sparkles. Go shower. We’ll clean up here, and then Noah made pies. New Thanksgiving tradition. We’re having dessert here first before we go to your parents’ house.”
“Fuck yes,” I mumble, because Noah’s pies are amazing. Not as good as mine, but that’s still embargoed information for my family. “You’re the best. All of you. Even when you send me a dick and glitter bomb.”
Noah grins at me, surveying the damage to my apartment. “This really is our best work.”
The last thing I hear as I close the door to my bedroom is all six of them laughing all over again, and damned if I’m not smiling too.
Half an hour later, my floors and I still sparkle despite multiple rounds of shampoo for me and endless vacuuming, but I’m slightly mollified by my family sprawled around my living room and the six pies sitting on the coffee table.
“Oh my god, this is so good,” Hannah mumbles with a mouth full of lemon meringue.
“You know it, Gorgeous,” Noah says with a wink, leaning over and pressing a kiss to her neck. “Had to make my girl her favorite.”
“Gah, you guys are too cute for words,” Jo squeals from her spot on the floor, leaning against Jordan’s legs.
“We are, aren’t we,” Noah says with a grin, tossing an arm around Hannah’s shoulders and tugging her closer.
“You are.” Amelia contemplates the pies on the table and digs into the chocolate chip cookie pie that Noah didn’t put nearly enough vanilla in, but I keep my mouth shut about that. “What’s Evan doing for Thanksgiving, Cooper?”
“She’s with her parents. Why?” I say with what I hope is a casual tone. I know I don’t quite get there when Elliot smirks at me.
“So, you know her schedule, huh?”
I shrug. “We were texting earlier. I was just making conversation.”
Noah raises an eyebrow in my direction. “What were you texting about?”
I choose my words carefully and tell a half truth. “She had to take her blood pressure at home, so I wanted to see how she was.”
“Is everything okay?” Hannah asks, concern in her voice.
“It’s fine. She gets anxious about blood pressure, so it’s usually high at the doctor’s office. The doctor wanted her to start taking it at home.”
“White coat syndrome,” Jordan says.
I turn to him. “Huh?”
“It’s a thing. People get anxious at the doctor, so their blood pressure shoots up. It’s pretty common. Taking it at home is a kind of immersion therapy, and it’ll also help the doctor spot when it’s actually high and when it’s artificially high.”
I nod. “That’s what the doctor said.”
“You went with her to the doctor?” Noah asks.
Hannah backhands him in the chest. “Of course he went with her to the doctor. It’s his baby too.”
Noah shrugs. “I don’t know how these things work.”
“Join the club,” I mumble. “I’m just trying to do what Dad said. Take care of her. Make sure she has everything she needs. This is new territory for both of us, but especially for Evan. I want to do what I can to make it easier for her.”
“Oh my god, you like her.” Every head in the room turns to Jordan, who is grinning at me like a maniac. “And not in the We have to work together because we accidentally made a baby way. In the I want to be together forever way.”
“Fuck off, no I don’t.”
Do I?
“Why are you all blushy then?” Amelia asks, studying me.
I shove a forkful of apple pie in my mouth to avoid answering. I have no fucking idea what to say because I kind of think they’re right, and I have no idea what to do about it.
“Seriously, Coop. Even your ears are red,” Noah says with a smirk, and I just barely resist the urge to throw my fork at him.
“It’s okay, you know,” Hannah says in that quiet way she has. “You’re allowed to have feelings for her that have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you guys are having a baby together. They can be mutually exclusive.”
“Can they?” I ask, setting my fork down on my plate, appetite suddenly gone.
“We hated each other until, like, a month ago. Maybe we still kind of do. I don’t fucking know.
How am I supposed to figure out whether I like her for her or because we’re suddenly tied together for the rest of our lives by a baby neither of us expected?
” I didn’t mean to say all that, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize the utter truth of them.
Elliot leans forward, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Coop, you’re the best person I know, and you’ll take care of Evan because that’s how you’re built. And you’re also the most intuitive of all of us. So, what does all that intuition tell you?”
I look around my living room at my older brothers, at the women they love. My family.
And I think of Evan.
For the first time since she told me she was pregnant, I think only of her.
The exasperated look she gives me when I do something at work to piss her off.
The way it felt when she held my hand in the doctor’s office like I was the only thing keeping her grounded in the spinning vortex our lives have become.
The late-night texts. The sounds she made when I was inside her.
The smell of cherries. The way I kind of wish I could have invited her here.
How she would give my brothers shit and talk romance novels with the girls and occupy the space next to me that I’m beginning to suspect is shaped exactly like her.
“Shit,” I mutter. “I really like her.”
“Fuck yeah, you do,” Noah says with a grin. “Now what are you going to do about it?”
I take a deep breath and blow it out, looking around the room again, feeling suddenly, oddly light.
“I’m going to get the girl.”